CyberLink Media Suite 12 Ultimate is a supercharged multimedia suite which bundles together just about everything in CyberLink's extensive product range. (And unlike previous versions, there's no need to worry about whether you're getting the "Deluxe" or "Ultra" edition of something, or what that means: the suite just includes the full version of them all.)

PowerDVD 14 is included to take care of your media playback needs: music, video, DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and more. MediaShow 6 helps to organise and share your photos and videos, while MediaEspresso 7 Deluxe is a fast and easy-to-use media conversion tool.

PowerDirector 12 is a particular star here, being a very capable video editor. PhotoDirector 5 is on hand whenever you need to edit or enhance photos, and WaveEditor 2 can assist in recording audio, applying effects, or cutting and trimming it to suit your requirements.

If it's time to share your photos or videos on disc, then PowerProducer 6 is a solid authoring tool which will help you create professional DVD and Blu-ray movie discs.

Power2Go 9 handles more general disc-related tasks: ripping CDs, mounting disc images, creating data discs and running basic backups. And InstantBurn 5 is a packet burning tool which allows you to use your optical discs (including the latest Blu-ray formats) just like a hard drive.

Bonus tools include PowerBackup 2.6, PowerDVD Copy 1.5 and LabelPrint 2.5 (the names will give you a very good idea what they do).

Everything we've listed so far is also available in the slightly cheaper CyberLink Media Suite 12 Ultra, but Ultimate takes this to another level with three Content Packs (Holiday, Travel, Romance), and a trio of mobile apps. PowerDirector Mobile and a new PhotoDirector Mobile bring video and photo editing to Android and Windows 8 devices, while the new Power Media Player is a powerful player for Android, iOS and Windows 8.

There's a vast amount to learn, of course, and that's even before you start building your game. But there's plenty of documentation, tutorials, demos and sample projects to point you in the right direction.

The package is now entirely free, too - no annoying limitations, nag screens or anything else. Epic now only requires that you pay a 5% royalty after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter. And even then, you "pay no royalty for film projects, contracting and consulting projects such as architecture, simulation and visualization."

8.48 brings:
- Optimized grass rendering and procedural foliage system preview
- Plugins available in Marketplace
- Improved accuracy for motion blur
- New Tone Mapper
- Support for all the latest VR hardware including Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Steam VR and HTC Vive, Leap Motion, and Sony's Project Morpheus for PlayStation 4
- "Scrubbable" network replays with rewind support and live time scrubbing
- Visualize the memory footprint of game assets in an interactive tree map UI